Red’s teeth hummed, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Branches arched toward her, roots slithered beneath her feet, and she stood frozen as a deer in the path of an arrow.
This was what she’d prepared for, in the deepest parts of her mind, the places she didn’t have to look at too closely. She’d denied it to Neve, saying they didn’t know what happened to the Second Daughters who crossed the border. But she’d known there could be nothing here but death, and she thought she’d prepared for it.
Now that it waited, shaped like clawed branches and twisted roots, she realized that preparation wasn’t acceptance. All the quiet acquiescence she’d swallowed over twenty years erupted, spilled over, drove her teeth together not in fear but in rage. She wanted to live, and damn the things that said she shouldn’t.
So Red ran.
Vines swung for her, the leaf-strewn ground buckling to trip her feet. The white trees bent and arched as if fighting against invisible bonds, screaming for release.
Like the forest was an animal desperate for her blood, and something held it back.
Finally, Red reached a clearing. White trees ringed it, quivering, but she ran to the center, where the ground was only moss and dirt. Her knees hit the soil, her breath rasped, skirt in tatters and twigs in her hair.
The moment of calm shattered with a sound of splintering wood. One of the white trunks, slowly splitting, like a smile cutting from one side of a mouth to the other.
The trunk opened wider, gleaming with sap-dripping fangs. One by one, smiles cut across the other trunks, smiles full of teeth, smiles that wanted blood.
Red lurched up on shaky legs, started running again. Her feet were numb, a stitch pulled at her side, but she ran on and on.
Eventually, her knees gave out, vision narrowed to a pinprick. Red collapsed in a pile of leaves, forehead pressed to the ground.
Maybe this was the fulfilling of the bargain. The stories of Gaya’s body, riddled with root and rot— maybe the Wolf wouldn’t decide whether or not she was an acceptable sacrifice until after his Wilderwood consumed her like it’d consumed Gaya in the end, waiting to see if it spat out the Kings in return. Maybe he’d been the one holding it back as she ran, whetting its appetite with the chase to unleash it when she was spent.
Red’s eyes closed against the expectation of teeth in her neck.
A minute. Two. Nothing happened. Sweat sticking her hair to her face, she looked up.
An iron gate rose from the ground. Double her height, it stretched from side to side, curving around before disappearing into the gloom. Pieces of a castle showed through gaps in the metal— a tower, a turret. A ruin, half consumed by the forest around it, but it was something.
Red stood on shaky legs. Slowly, she pressed her hands to the gate.
Chapter Four
I t didn’t open.
Red’s eyes flickered over the iron as she nervously wiped her hands on her torn skirt. If there was a latch, it was too small to see. No hinges, either— the gate was one unbroken piece of iron. It rose to two swirling points, as if to mark an entrance, but the bar down the center was as solid as the rest of it.
“Kings on shitting horses.” Teeth bared, Red slammed her hands against the metal. She’d made it through a fanged forest, she could find a way to open a damn gate.
A rustle. Red glanced over her shoulder. Only two of the white trees were visible in the gloom, but both of them looked closer than they had before.
Red tried to lift her hands to pound on the gate again, but they wouldn’t obey. Her palms refused to move, like they’d somehow grafted onto the iron. Sliding in the leaves, Red tried to wrench free, but the gate held her fast, the rasp of her breath loud in the silent fog.
She felt the trees’ regard, heavy on her shoulders, lifting the hair on the back of her neck. Watching. Waiting. Still hungry.
Something shifted under her hand, breaking the cycle of shapeless panic, crystallizing it into sharpened, focused fear.
The surface of the gate was moving, slithering like she’d cupped her hand over an anthill. Rough metal rippled against her skin, tracing the lines in her palms, her fingerprints.
As suddenly as it started, the crawling feeling stopped. The solid bar of iron split slowly down the middle, bottom to top, like a sapling growing from the ground. With a quiet hitch, the gate fell open.
A moment’s pause, then Red stumbled forward. As soon as she was through, the gate closed behind her. She didn’t have to look to know it was solid again. When she peered at her palm, it was unblemished but for a few spots of rust.
The ruined castle rose from fog and shadow, reaching almost as tall as the surrounding trees. Once, it might’ve been grand, but now the walls looked to be more moss than stone. A long corridor stretched to her left, ending in a jumble of broken rock. Directly ahead, a tower speared the sky, a weathered wooden door in its center. What looked like a large room was built onto its right side, in considerably better repair than the corridor. Crumbling piles of stone dotted the landscape— remnants of collapsed battlements, fallen turrets.